Smartphones are great. There are also … a lot. The idea for a more balanced device that gives all the most significant and useful functions of the smartphone, but keeps away from the infinity loop, is tempting for a long time. Getting this balance turns out to be almost impossible.
ON This episode VergecastWe try to do it well. The VergeAllison Johnson joins the program to talk about the novel Featherlight Phone III, and then go through the list of several dozen things Power Make and wonder if your perfect, reasonable, functional phone should be able to do this. Some things are straightforward, some are surprisingly hard. We are still not sure what to do with Snapchat.
Finally, we answer the question from the Vergecast hotline (Call 866-wverge11 or send an e-mail to vergeckast@theverge.com!) About whether someone is working on a home camera that can say where you left the scissors. The solution is a hard problem, but many people work on it. (Maybe it is not especially for scissors.)
If you want to learn more about everything we are talking about in this episode, here are some links to start: